


We Get So Happy With the Hearts That We Break

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Political Animals
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Multi, References to Suicide, Sibling Incest, Spoilers, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He plays the piano sometimes. </p>
<p>Like he used to, with hands that are not his father’s. </p>
<p>With hands that don’t belong to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Get So Happy With the Hearts That We Break

**WE GET SO HAPPY WITH THE HEARTS THAT WE BREAK**  
POLITICAL ANIMALS  
Douglas/T.J.; T.J./OMC(s)  
 **WARNINGS** : twincest (jesus the last time I wrote that was when I was in the Good Charlotte fandom); drug use; mention of suicide attempt  
 **NOTES** : Spoilers for 1.05

  
He plays the piano sometimes. 

Like he used to, with hands that are not his father’s. 

With hands that don’t belong to him. 

***

The night T.J. wakes up in the hospital for the first clear moment, his brother is beside him. 

Before that, in the moments where he would wake up for one second, two seconds, wake up with wet, blurry eyes, and his mother’s hand gripping his hand, strong, before he would slip back into dark, drugged dreams, he remembers the stifling heat of heavy blankets, he remembers the cool recycled air enveloping him, he remembers the bitter sting of his mother’s perfume. Before that, he remembers the shape of his father and the sound of his soft, tired drawl, the shape of his grandmother and her careful sips of gin, the tall, thin Anne shape standing straight-backed besides that hard hospital chair, her wide-eyed, worried gaze, her wringing hands. 

Before that, he remembers cocaine. 

His brother tells him that he’ll be different this time, and T.J. wants to believe him so badly that he does, lies with the liar’s lips that he was given honestly, given from birth, and smiles when his brother presses a warm, round thumb to T.J.’s forehead to sweep the cold sweat from T.J.’s brow. 

“Promise me,” Douglas says, and T.J. promises. 

***

Once is an accident, T.J. tells Douglas. The drugs he can taste even when he closes his eyes. 

Twice is bad luck, he says, and he’s breathlessly panting into the place where Douglas’ neck meets his shoulder, his teeth sinking into skin. Douglas grips T.J.’s hair and pulls and T.J. laughs, but it’s sharp and unkind. 

They do this sometimes, about as frequently as T.J. plays, and T.J. finds it kind of wrong, kind of dirty, when Douglas pushes him into the piano in his mother’s living room and kisses him hard enough to bleed. He plays inconsistent notes with his palms, smashes the keys with every thrust, and it’s perfectly scored for him and Douglas, and it’s harsh and noisy, and Douglas doesn’t say a word. 

Three times is just deliberate, T.J. says, and Douglas tells him to shut the fuck up. 

***

It was more than just Sean. 

Maybe his mother thinks a closeted Republican is enough to make him snort and drink and swallow and smoke himself to death, but it was never just about Sean. It was never just about the stolen, secret moments between them, because it can’t just be about that. Because he would never let it be just about that. 

Because Sean’s not worth it. 

Not like Douglas is. 

***

T.J. stays with his mother and grandmother and pretends not to care when they both look at him like he’s fragile. He watches reality TV and reads the middle sections of the old, dusty books in his mother’s library before he gives up, abandoning Joyce and Hemingway and Kafka to search for porn on his laptop. 

He pretends he never looked for the pills he stashed here, the little vials of cocaine, and his grandmother pretends she didn’t notice him not looking, and his mother stocks the fridge with vitamin water and pushes the plastic bottles on him whenever he stops talking, and Douglas comes over with bruises on his neck in the shape of teeth marks, and nobody says anything. 

T.J. sits next to him on the couch, uncomfortably close, pressing his heat into Douglas’ side just as Anne makes her way over, smiling hesitantly at him, unsure of what to say or what to do with her hands, waiting two, three minutes before she excuses herself to the bathroom. 

Douglas doesn’t move away. 

***

He fucks his way through NA.

It’s easy for him to hide in the bathroom after the meetings and smoke cigarettes until one of those rough-edged, newly clean boys comes in, watches him watching them unzip, watches him lick his lips, flicking the ash from his cigarette into the bowl of the toilet. There’s always a bare flash of recognition in their eyes, a hint of surprise, a hint of pity, before it’s mouths and tongues and sharp teeth on T.J.’s chin, fingers that dig into his hips so hard his skin starts to burn. 

He likes to think that Douglas is outside in the car, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, waiting. He likes to think that Douglas is picturing exactly this, this boy with his mouth on T.J. and T.J. with his mouth on this boy, and a flash of skin underneath clothes, and the obscene, slick slide of T.J.’s tongue. 

He likes to think that Douglas thinks about him sometimes, when he touches Anne the way he used to touch T.J., when he moans her name out loud in their bed. He likes to think that Douglas thinks about him just as much as T.J. thinks about Douglas. 

He likes to think that they’re both fucked. 

***

The first time really was an accident. 

“I’m sorry,” T.J. had told Douglas from the hospital bed. 

He was lying then, too. 

***

His mother finds a discreet, expensive therapist somewhere between the hospital and NA, and T.J. fucks him, too, pressed back against the long, leather couch and huffing silently into his old, weathered neck, wanting to bite down just as hard as he would if it were Douglas. The therapist leaves a wet, bruised hickey on T.J.’s neck and T.J. finds himself touching it every time he opens his mouth to speak. 

Between fucks, he tells him about his mother, and he tells him about his father, the same script he’s been sticking to every year since he came out, and the therapist moves his glasses up his nose, sitting back in his chair, his bare knees pressed tight together, his worn wedding ring shining gold in the sunlight, and asks him if he’s been careful, sexually speaking. 

T.J. laughs for so long that he starts to cry. 

***

He plays the piano sometimes. 

But only when Douglas asks him to.


End file.
